Friday, July 29, 2011

anyone who's been to arrowmont school of art and craft in gatlinburg, tn knows that there are few hidden treasures in that town (no offense, it's true!) but for the exception of arrowmont itself, the intensely beautiful great smoky mountains national park and a few cool antique shops.so one evening i'm on my daily walk trying to wend my way unscathed through the maze of bad food, bad clothing and bad art (thomas kinkade) shops and i decided to walk a bit further than normal. i happened to look up as i was between a parking lot and a large group of trees to see this beauty of a cemetery. i love cemeteries, they're just peaceful, beautiful places and this one offered a calm respite from what is just not a quiet town.what i found most interesting were the the make-shift headstones with the names scratched into them. in some cases, new headstones replaced these, but the old ones were left standing next to them. i spent a lot of time photographing and reading these headstones and some of the students in the workshop i was teaching took rubbings of them. all in all, it was a great find!

my second workshop for the month of may was an advanced encaustic workshop in pittsburgh at the society for contemporary craft. i've been teaching encaustic workshops for seven years and surprisingly, this was the first specifically advanced workshop i've taught. the workshop was filled at ten participants, most of whom had taken the beginner's encaustic workshop from me last year (see this post and this one) or earlier in the month (monday's post this week), so i couldn't repeat any techniques i had already taught in that workshop. learning and teaching new techniques is always a challenge, but it's a challenge i love! in this workshop, i concentrated on texture and incorporated materials like plaster, tyvek, aqua dispersion pigments, graphite powder, foiling with techniques like working with stencils, creating plaids with masks and parchment paper decals (my very new invention-stay tuned!) we also discussed and experimented with various waxes, cool tools like metal eyedroppers, plaster tools and tjantings. the workshop concluded with an informative discussion on marketing oneself as an artist, approaching galleries and of course, the mini-critique discussion, which is always my favorite part of any workshop. the workshop was a hit and will be taught again next year at scc, dates still pending. the participants in this workshop were ellie steines, maggie muller, charlotte toal, charlotte ka, judy musser, eva trout, martha skarlinski, john skrabalak, sally adler, monica zettler-segal.

Monday, July 25, 2011

everyone working, helen's encaustic work, marvin's current lithograph work and 2 encaustic pieces, encaustic work, sally's 3d work and encaustic piece, maggi's current artist book work and encaustic piece.

it's been a very busy couple of months for workshops. my first workshop for the summer season was beginning encaustic in pittsburgh at the society for contemporary craft. the scc's studios don't have adequate ventilation, so we set up in the exhibition storage area, which works just fine for us! art can be and is made everywhere!!

this was an extremely fun bunch of people who just got into the process of making art with new techniques. the students learned everything about encaustic from branding to fusing to incising to creating texture. we ended the workshop with everyone showing a piece of their current work along with the pieces that they completed in the workshop. it's always interesting for me to see how the participants incorporate the new techniques they're learning into their current methodologies. good times!

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